Are Video Games Art? (Page 9 of 9)

For those interested, there's a Diablo 3 Open Beta going on until Monday. You have today and tomorrow to play Diablo 3 until lvl 13 with whatever character(s) you want.

I played it for a few hours last night.

Then I cried myself to sleep.

RE: "I hate my voice" -- one of the most popular radio personalities in the U.S. is Ira Glass, who has one of the worst radio voices I can think of. If he can do it, anyone can.

Joss is supposed to be on Ira's show this weekend.

edit, sorry, it's a re-run.
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-a … -the-crime

edited edity edit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM3Hme36g0s

Last edited by drewjmore (2012-04-21 19:58:13)

I'm still in the early part of the game. I've got a lvl 6 Barbarian going right now. The game suffers from what I may as well dub "Modern Gaming Syndrome". What I've seen so far is that the game is going to do everything for me, and my job is just to follow the flashing arrows and click on bad guys.

Now, the previous games did the exact same thing, but I loved them. But the previous games were more about building a character the way you wanted and collecting and crafting loot and stuff to make the most bad-ass character you could. There were elements of strategy to the skill tree and combat. This was the fun part of Diablo 2. They have apparently removed it entirely from Diablo 3. They basically took Diablo 2 and removed the fun part.

Combat in Diablo 2 had a variety to it. You often had to be very careful about how you were approaching a situation. Some enemies you could just kill the hell out of. Some enemies would run away from you while taking pot-shots. Some enemies would attack en-mass and try to stab you in the face as a group. You'd often go up against enemies that would attack you in melee while others would hang back and shoot things at you. It was all random, but the various enemy types for each stage felt very well balanced and worked together well, playing up each other's strengths and make up for each other's weaknesses. Sometimes the only strategy that will work is just "Load up on health potions and town portal scrolls and slog through it".

Combat in Diablo 3, thus far for me, has been "run up to stuff and hit it". There has been no variation on enemy tactics at all. Enemies all (FUCKING ALL OF THEM) go down in one hit most of the time, with the exception of the little mini-boss dudes. Nothing has shot anything at me yet at all, with the exception of the little bat-dudes that shoot lightning. You can take 5 or 6 enemies out with one slash. I have not once used a health potion. NOT ONCE. The game drops ludicrous amounts of gold and loot. I've already got something like 150 or so total armor rating and several thousand gold.

I was so ready to love this game and I was in a state of glee the whole time the beta was installing. That was the high point. Everything after that has been disappointing. I didn't rage-quit like I have with so many other 'big' games recently, but after a couple hours I was just bored. I patiently waited for the next waypoint to reveal itself (since there are no town portals, apparently? These guys did play the previous games before making this, right?) and when I finally did get back to town I went to save the game and realized there was no 'save' thing anywhere in the menu.

So I just said 'fuck it' and quit. I'm about to go back and continue, but if it didn't autosave then I'll probably just say 'fuck it' again and that'll be the last time I ever play Diablo 3.

But the art is amazing. It might be worth buying just to see all the eye-candy.

The beta is designed to be linear, easy, and fast. It's effectively a tutorial, and set at an easy difficulty. Hell, the randomization has only recently been worked in.

But the mechanics are solid, the gearing and crafting is fun. It's Diablo.

ARMA 3 is looking a bit special.

I hope thy don't add too many new features, to be honest... I've already got precious few unbound keys on my keyboard in Arma 2...

Again, the thing that counts with ARMA is the engine improvements. I don't give a damn what they do in terms of missions and features, because I'll be playing custom online clan missions anyway, and there'll probably be a whole series of realism mods on top of it.